


Red on Red (It Seeps Through My Fingers)

by supurbangothic



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Bad Parent Gabriel Agreste, F/M, Gabriel Agreste is the fucking worst and this will make you hate him even more, Gabriel Agreste's A+ Parenting, can be read as adrienette, it's adrienette if you squint, literally just angst, pre-time travel fix-it, the it that must be fixed, these kids are put through way too much where are the adults
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23884417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supurbangothic/pseuds/supurbangothic
Summary: This is actually an entry for a ML drabble contest I entered, but I figured I would post it here for kicks. It is angst with absolutely no comfort, except a kind of hopeful ending, so don't read if you're expecting comfort or goodness.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	Red on Red (It Seeps Through My Fingers)

There’s...blood. Too much blood. It stains her hands, darkening the fabric of her suit, seeping through her fingers. She presses down harder, and the blond bleeding out under her hands lets out a pained noise. Her eyes flicker up to his face. Pained green eyes watch her, now bereft of a mask, growing ever dimmer with what must be nothing short of agony. 

“I...don’t think it’s going to work...Mari,” Adrien manages to grit out from between clenched teeth. “He got me,” a pained hiss as she presses her hands down, desperate to stop or slow the life leaking out of him, “with the end of his staff... it’s too deep.” 

“I am _going_ to save you,” she doesn’t shout, but her tone is choked and frantic, and she is forced to look away from his face as she tugs up the hem of his shirt to assess the wound. A gaping hole in his side, blood pouring out faster than she can clean it away. Nearby, Rena Rouge stands with a hand pressed to her mouth in horror, eyes leaking tears. Marinette is secretly glad that Carapace went off with Viperion to hand Hawkmoth - Gabriel Agreste, her mind reminds her in a numb sort of shock - over to the police. He’d be all over Adrien, too panicked to be any valuable help, but if she can’t save him - 

No. She can’t think like that. His own son. Gabriel Agreste had stabbed his own son, _out_ of the protective Cat Noir suit, to make a grab for his Miraculous. And she can’t...she can’t use Miraculous Ladybug, because she’s already used it when she _thought, stupidly_ that Hawkmoth had been properly subdued; and her transformation is ticking down by the minute as her friend, her _partner_ _ ,  _ bleeds out under the very hands that are supposed to be able to save him.

She replaces his shirt and puts her hands back over the wound. She’s not going to be able to stop the bleeding on her own. 

“Get an ambulance, _now_ ,” she shouts to Rena, and the red head tears off down the street. The bleeding isn’t slowing. _Why_ isn’t is slowing? She’s supposed to be lucky, isn’t she? Why is it that her luck is refusing to work exactly when she needs it the most? She’s _Ladybug_ , for pete’s sake, why is she so powerless?

“Mari...Marinette,” God, his voice sounds so weak, _too_ weak, it shouldn’t ever sound like that. She looks up to his face. His eyes are nearly closed, but they meet her own and brim over with tears. He’s _scared_ , she realizes, of course he is. They’re children, they’re just children, with their whole lives ahead of them, and they never _asked_ for this. Never deserved this. God, he looks so _young_. “Th-thank you. For being...being here.”

And he _smiles_ at her. Not a grin, just a gentle smile that makes her heart clench painfully in her chest. And she realizes, that’s all he’s ever wanted. For someone to _be_ there, to stay with him, to save him from his loneliness. The tears spill over her cheeks despite how hard she’s been trying to hold them back, to be strong for him. Her hands are too occupied to wipe them away.

“Always,” she chokes out. _Where_ is the ambulance? _Where_ are the adults that are supposed to help them, to keep them from danger? Where have they ever been?

Adrien Agreste is still smiling as his eyes slip closed and his labored breathing levels out, slows, stops entirely. Then his mouth goes slack, the muscles loosening, and he’s gone. She shouts his name, shakes his shoulders. Nothing. He’s _gone_. She lets out a wail that echoes balefully around the square. His blood is still pouring, pooling around her, and she pulls back her hands from the wound. Stares at them. For a long moment she sits there, staring at her hands, the world around her a dull blur.

The sound of sirens, faint but drawing nearer, brings her back to herself. They’re too late. Anger bubbles in her gut. If they had only been _faster_ \- 

But no. It was her that had doomed him, not sending for the ambulance in the first place, thinking she could save him on her own. Still hanging on to that stupid, arbitrary rule that the public couldn’t know their identities, even _after_ Hawkmoth was subdued. Hindsight was 20/20, as they say. If she could go back…

If she could go back. Her gaze flickers to the ring, still on Adrien’s hand. With one bloodied hand she touches one of her earrings. Hawkmoth had wanted a wish. Could the two Miraculous’ together truly do such a thing?

“Tikki,” she says softly, and the tiny goddess is there, eyes filled with grief. “Does the wish...does it really exist?” Tikki nods.

“Any single wish the bearer of both the Ladybug and the Cat could want. But only one.”

Marinette doesn’t need to hear any more. She guides the ring off of Adrien’s finger and rises. When she slips it on her own, a little black cat flies out and hovers in front of her.

“Are you going to save him?” The god of destruction asks her.

“Yes.”

Marinette closes her eyes...and makes her wish. There’s a feeling of falling through the air, then the impact of landing, somehow muffled. When she opens them again, she’s in the same spot she was, but lying on the ground, looking up.

“Finally, I came back…” No one is going to die, this time. And Gabriel Agreste...well. He is going to come to know the meaning of regret.


End file.
